This invention relates generally to airborne missile delivery system and in particular to a simplified system for guiding missiles once they are released from the launching platform.
Numerous systems have been proposed for the delivery and guidance of air-to-air missiles. These systems have proven to be very costly and sophisticated on the one hand, and relatively easy to counter measure on the other. For example, systems utilizing the principles of infra-red tracking and guidance may be lead astray by flares released from the tracked aircraft. Radar tracking is similarly confused by chaff and other electronic countermeasures as well as signals returned from the ground. In an effort to increase the reliability of these delivery systems, an attempt was made to allow the pilot of the weapons platform to also pilot the missile to its target via a separate control stick and television viewing system. This system, although hampered by clouds, dust and smoke functioned well, except for a rather large error or miss distance inherent in the system. The additional manual dexterity required by the pilot to fly the missile while simultaneously flying his aircraft also derogates from the total effectiveness of the system.
In any event, all cases including the simple ballastic missile risk avoidance by evasive maneuvers of the tracked aircraft.
Current air-to-air combat policy dictates that there will be visual and positive identification of a hostile aircraft before it is engaged. As a result of this most aerial combat involves close-in situations with high-q maneuvering, and rapid situation change, all taking place at generally sub-sonic speeds.
Combat under these circumstances occurs in limited air space and is terminated in extremely short time periods. This often leads to a single attack limitation for an encounter.
Existing air-to-air delivery and guidance missile systems are not designed for this environment. The weapon envelopes under the close-in high-g target encounter are limited, due to missile reaction time and acceleration limitations.
The disadvantages of the prior art have been markedly improved by a new combination of apparatus into the system of this invention which has proven highly effective within the above mentioned criteria.